2026 Panel Schedule

Presented by University of Southern Mississippi University Forum

These two authors share stories of resistance to a brutal regime, a commitment to dignity, and a political awakening essential to the fight for Syrian freedom.

• Joseph Earl Thomas (Moderator) – God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer
• Loubna Mrie – Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria
• Anand Gopal – Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution

Presented by University of Southern Mississippi de Grummond Children's Literature Collection; Sara & Bill Ray

Picture books and what waits inside them: joy, new babies, brave firefighters, and one candy-colored unicorn.

• Karlie Herndon (Moderator)
• Chrystal D. Giles – We Are Joy
• Breanna J. McDaniel – Auntie's Baby
• Sherri Duskey Rinker – Construction Site: Firefight!
• Robyn Wall – Candi the Candicorn

Presented by University of Mississippi College of Liberal Arts; Mississippi State University Department of English

Personal struggle becomes a shared truth in these works of poetry on resilience, connection, and life's most difficult moments.

• Derrick Harriell (Moderator) – Come Kingdom: Poems
• Catherine Pierce – Dear Beast: Poems
• Angela Ball – Steeplechase: Poems
• Samyak Shertok – No Rhododendron: Poems

Presented by Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library; Becky & Doug Montague

The 2026 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters honorees showcase the breadth of creative work being made in Mississippi today. Hear the stories, ideas, and creative journeys behind this year's award-winning work in a conversation celebrating Mississippi's artists and writers.

• Ellen Ann Fentress (Moderator) – The Steps We Take: A Memoir of Southern Reckoning
• Julian Rankin (Moderator) 
• Lauren Rhoades – Split the Baby: A Memoir in Pieces
• Anne E. Marshall – Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform
• Saddiq Dzukogi – Bakandamiya: An Elegy
  

Presented by Crooks Foundation
Coverage provided by C-SPAN
Room by BarbourHurst

Jim Harrison and Larry McMurtry were beloved writers whose lives were as intriguing as their work, and by digging through archives and conducting interviews, these biographers uncovered the men behind the legends.

• Valerie Walley (Moderator)
• David Streitfeld – Western Star: The Life and Legends of Larry McMurtry
• Todd Goddard – Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer's Life

Presented by University of Southern Mississippi Office of the President; Pass Christian Books & Cat Island Coffeehouse

PEN/Faulkner Award winner, Story Prize winner, and National Book Award finalist Deesha Philyaw joins Natchez-born writer and educator Jerid P. Woods to discuss her debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, in which a megachurch first lady gets a pageant invitation on the eve of her fortieth birthday, and her past comes for her.

• Jerid P. Woods (Moderator)
• Deesha Philyaw – The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman: A Novel

Presented by Jones Walker LLP; Jackie Posey Bailey; Beard + Riser Architects

For these three artists: a painter, a photographer, and a quilter, the small town is not a limitation but the source.

• Brett Kenyon (Moderator)
• Wyatt Waters – The Watercolor Road | Natchez
• Erin Austen Abbott – Waterfront Living: Inspired Coastal Homes & Small Town Lifestyles
• Coulter Fussell – Coulter Fussell: The Proving Ground

Presented by The Perry & Kime Families; Argent Wealth

Discussing the final book of her hilariously quirky trilogy The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science, SNL star and two-time Primetime Emmy Award winner Kate McKinnon celebrates weirdness as hijinks ensue, leaving three peculiar sisters to save the world in The Jungle of Carabanana!

• David Lewis (Moderator)
• Kate McKinnon – The Jungle of Carabanana

Live-stream available September 26

Presented by University of Mississippi Center for the Study of Southern Culture/Oxford Conference for the Book; Janet & Luther Ott

Belonging and connection anchor these novels, written by three women whose roots run through the Deep South.

• Lee Boudreaux (Moderator)
• Katy Simpson Smith – The Maltese Version: A Novel
• Stephanie Soileau – Should the Waters Take Us
• Hallie Elizabeth Newton – Agnes Lives!: A Novel

Presented by University of Mississippi Department of English; Louisa Dixon & Jerry Johnson; Frankie & Roberts Wilson

Beth Ann Fennelly, Mississippi's Poet Laureate from 2016 to 2021, sits down with Mississippi comedian Mary Ryan Brown to talk about The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs, a book about family, marriage, motherhood, and the small moments in between that shape a life.

• Mary Ryan Brown (Moderator)
• Beth Ann Fennelly – The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs

In partnership with Jackson/Hinds Library System

Mychal Threets, the internet's favorite librarian and host of the revived Reading Rainbow, shows everyone is welcome at the library in his picture book, I'm So Happy You're Here. Come experience library joy in this session!

• Margaret McMullan (Moderator) – Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return
• Mychal Threets – I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy

Live-stream available September 26

Presented by Historic Natchez Foundation; Dixon Books; Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP

Authors reimagine the past through modern eyes, building whole lives in the gaps history left.

• Tracy Carr (Moderator) – Conversations with Ellen Gilchrist
• Gabriella Saab – The Survivors Guild
• Emily Franklin – Love & Other Monsters
• Lauren Willig – The Girl from Greenwich Street: A Novel of Hamilton, Burr, and America's First Murder Trial
• G. Todd Smith – Josie: A True Story of Race, Rescue, and Resilience

Presented by Mississippi Today
Coverage provided by C-SPAN
Room by BarbourHurst

These writers reckon with America's past and the work of reaching a brighter future.

• Traci Thomas (Moderator)
• W. Ralph Eubanks – When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land
• Eddie S. Glaude Jr. – America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries
• Robert P. Jones – Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy

Presented by The Source by BankPlus; Lynn & Bill Crawford

History and time taunt us in these novels, whose authors probe rage, revenge, and ghosts as their leading characters try to make sense of the present.

• MiMi Bishop (Moderator)
• Jasmine L. Holmes – Our Sister's Keeper
• Isabelle Spotts – Saint Delilah: A Novel
• Kelly McWilliams – American Nightmare: A Novel

Presented by LGBTQ Fund of Mississippi; Big House Books

From coming of age and finding belonging to friendship, desire, and self-discovery, these books explore the many ways we come to understand ourselves.

• Rep. Fabian Nelson (Moderator)
• Gwendolyn Paradice – The Divining Season: A Novel
• Sonia Feldman – Girl's Girl: A Novel
• George M. Johnson – All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto

Presented by Friends of the Community Foundation of Washington County; Hon. David Neil McCarty

Fathers loom large in the lives and work of these writers, who turn a career’s worth of attention toward their own. A revealing conversation about what we inherit from our fathers, the questions that linger, and the men we spend a lifetime trying to understand.

• Wright Thompson (Moderator) – The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
• Tom Junod – In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man: A Memoir
• Beowulf Sheehan – The Father of the Man: The Last Author Portrait Sitting with Cormac McCarthy

Presented by Millsaps College

Actor, director, and travel writer Andrew McCarthy joins Pass Christian documentary filmmaker Patrick O'Connor for a conversation about Who Needs Friends, a New York Times bestseller built on a cross-country drive that began with a question from his son.

• Patrick O'Connor (Moderator)
• Andrew McCarthy – Who Needs Friends: An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America
  

Presented by Mississippi Humanities Council; Lesly Gaynor Murray in Memory of Stephen C. Edds

These writers underscore the beautifully complicated Southern experience, each one pulling a single piece of it into focus.

• John T. Edge (Moderator) – House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home
• Marcus Wicker – Dear Mothership: Poems
• Lee Bains – Work Lunch: Poems
• Jordan LaHaye Fontenot – Home of the Happy: A Murder on the Cajun Prairie
• Nikesha Elise Williams – The Seven Daughters of Dupree: A Novel

Presented by Fischer Galleries; Jean & Tim Medley; Ginnie & Luther Munford

Mississippi-born photographer and Wilco member Patrick Sansone joins documentary photographer Kate Medley to discuss his second book of photography, Noticings, a collection of film photographs from solitary pandemic-era road trips that find quiet beauty in the overlooked and the abandoned.

• Kate Medley (Moderator) – Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South – A Photographic Road Trip
• Patrick Sansone – Noticings (2019-2021)

Presented by Woodward Hines Education Foundation
Coverage provided by C-SPAN
Room by BarbourHurst

One collection, five of its writers, and a conversation that considers the impact of incarceration, the possibilities unlocked through education, and the work of turning a second chance into a life.

• Stanley Andrisse (Moderator) – Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence
• Judith Negron – Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence
• Mancy Thompson – Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence
• Tenaj Moody – Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence
• William Freeman III – Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence

Presented by Mississippi Humanities Council; The MAX: Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience

Graphic novels offer creative and honest ways into Mississippi stories while reaching new audiences. Mississippi native and Megascope curator John Jennings joins writer Christopher Benson and illustrator Eric Battle to discuss Framing Emmett Till: Exposing Dark Fear.

• John Spann (Moderator)
• John Jennings – Parable of the Talents: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
• Christopher Benson – Framing Emmett Till: Exposing Dark Fear
• Eric Battle – Framing Emmett Till: Exposing Dark Fear

Presented by Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival; Huntington Bank

Curiosity leads the way in these middle grade stories, where one stubborn question is enough to send a young reader looking for the answer.

• Sarah Mangrum (Moderator)
• Michael Buckley – The Weirdies Get Weirder
• Chrystal D. Giles – Listen to the Girls
• Amy Tern – Sneaks
• Katie Kennedy – Did You Hear What Happened at the Alamo? The Texas Revolution of 1835-36

Presented by Dr. Tonja Murphy

In the Harlem of these books, love keeps its secrets: an affair, a marriage of appearances, and lives the record straightened out, all brought back into view.

• Crystal Forte (Moderator)
• Victoria Christopher Murray – Harlem Rhapsody: A Novel
• Tiffany L. Warren – A Harlem Wedding: A Novel
• George M. Johnson – Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known

Presented by Pigott Law Firm; Bethany & Lucien Smith

A frontier murder spree, an axe massacre at a famous architect's refuge, a senator shot in his own Capitol: three cases that never quite closed.

• Patrick Dean (Moderator) – Nature's Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World
• Katherine Grandjean – Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution
• Casey Sherman – The Killer and Frank Lloyd Wright: The True Story of Mass Murder in Paradise
• Jack B. McGuire – Killing the Kingfish: The Huey Long Assassination

Presented by Carolyn & Chris Ray; University of Mississippi Office of the Provost

People pushed to their limits hold these novels together, each one reaching toward something like redemption.

• Tom Franklin (Moderator) – Devilwood (coming Feb. 2027)
• Jason Stone – The Beauty of the Days Gone By: A Novel
• Kevin Powers – Children of the Wild: A Novel
• Joe Bond – Hope House: A Novel

Presented by Book Club Babes

A young woman stands at the center of each of these romance novels, and love competes with the thing she is fighting hardest to win.

• Mary Osborne (Moderator)
• Jennifer Iacopelli – Game, Set, Match: A Novel
• Lauren Willig – What Happens at Nightfall: A Novel
• Elizabeth Agyemang – Divine Oaths
• Logan Karlie – Cursed by the Dawn

Presented by Mississippi Department of Archives & History; Capitol Resources, LLC; Danny Cupit; Julie & Brad Chism
Coverage provided by C-SPAN
Room by BarbourHurst

Fifty years of state politics, written jointly by two operatives who spent their careers on opposite sides.

• Henry Barbour (Moderator)
• Byron D'Andra Orey (Moderator) – Mississippi, Conflict and Change: A New Edition
• Jere Nash – Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976-2026, Third Edition
• Andy Taggart – Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976-2026, Third Edition

Presented by Carla & Randy Wall; Nancy & Cecil Brown

Beloved actress and comedian Tisha Campbell brings her trademark humor and candor to The A Word: A Mother’s Journey Through Autism and Love, her deeply personal story of raising her son. Jackson comedian Rita Brent joins Campbell for a candid and lively conversation.

• Rita Brent (Moderator)
• Tisha Campbell – The A Word: A Mother's Journey Through Autism and Love

Presented by University of Southern Mississippi Dale Center for the Study of War & Society

Reading between the lines of the diaries, letters, and photos his grandfather left behind, musician and author David Baerwald blends historical reality with imagination in a thrilling debut novel of espionage, love, and war.

• David Blount (Moderator)
• David Baerwald – The Fire Agent

Presented by Eudora Welty Foundation

Booker Prize winner and MacArthur Fellow George Saunders joins Knopf Doubleday publishing executive Todd Doughty to discuss his second novel, Vigil. Darkly funny and wildly imaginative, it follows a dying oil executive through one unforgettable night with a spirit guide determined to get him to repent.

• Todd Doughty (Moderator) – Little Pieces of Hope: Happy-Making Things in a Difficult World
• George Saunders – Vigil: A Novel

Live-stream available September 26

Presented by Mississippi Humanities Council; University of Southern Mississippi Center for the Study of the Gulf South
Coverage provided by C-SPAN
Room by BarbourHurst

The hard truths of Mississippi's past get told straight in these books, each one grounded in a real place and a documented record.

• Steve Yarbrough (Moderator) – Stay Gone Days
• Jim Abbott – Paper Man: Chasing the Truth in the Mississippi Delta
• Stephen J. Gordin – Mississippi Conviction: Betrayal, Brotherhood, and the Fall of the Klan
• Rebecca A. Tuuri – Mixing: Race, Higher Education, and the Case of Clyde Kennard
• M. J. O'Brien – The Tougaloo Nine: The Jackson Library Sit-In at the Crossroads of Civil War and Civil Rights

Presented by Sue Taylor; Ellen & Greg Daniels

The tables turn as Knopf editor and two-time New York Times bestselling novelist Jenny Jackson sits down with Helen Ellis, an author she edits, to discuss The Shampoo Effect, her Read with Jenna summer comedy about friendship, pregnancy, and midlife.

• Helen Ellis (Moderator) – Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage
• Jenny Jackson – The Shampoo Effect

Presented by Wilma Wagner Cleveland; Bob Montgomery & Kathleen M. Mitchell

Life at its strangest, funniest, and most unfiltered, captured a few pages at a time.

• Mary Miller (Moderator) – Biloxi: A Novel
• George Singleton – Wounded Boarders: Stories
• Lydia Mathis – Desperate Bodies: Stories
• Michael Kardos – Quick Change: Stories
• Sarah Braunstein – Baby in a Box: Stories

Presented by Watkins & Eager, PLLC; Clearwater Group

Sportswriters and columnists relive the 2025-2026 Ole Miss football season, the most dramatic, tumultuous, and successful in the school's recent history.

• Neil White (Moderator) – A Season to Remember: 2025-2026 | Photographs & Essays
• Rick Cleveland – A Season to Remember: 2025-2026 | Photographs & Essays
• Sparky Reardon – A Season to Remember: 2025-2026 | Photographs & Essays
• Jeff Roberson – A Season to Remember: 2025-2026 | Photographs & Essays
• Chase Parham – A Season to Remember: 2025-2026 | Photographs & Essays
• Julias Weixler – A Season to Remember: 2025-2026 | Photographs & Essays

Presented by Anonymous in Honor of Darden North; Wise Carter Child & Caraway, P.A.

From global missions to rescue flights, these writers tell true stories of medicine practiced where the need is greatest, and of choosing what is right over what is easy.

• Darden North (Moderator) – Rooftop
• Dan Jones – Medical Missionary: My Journey Through Global Health and Higher Education
• Kevin Hazzard – No One's Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns to When There's Nowhere Else to Turn

Presented by Mississippi Department of Archives & History; Elizabeth & Percy Quinn

Two exciting biographies spotlight women who met the rigid expectations of their eras head-on, refusing to leave history as they found it.

• Katie Blount (Moderator)
• Michelle Young – The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland
• Laurie Gwen Shapiro – The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon

Presented by University of Southern Mississippi College of Arts & Sciences; Carol & Todd Maibach

The road does the teaching in these memoirs, where every mile and every stranger leaves a mark on the traveler.

• Jane Alexander (Moderator)
• Lauren Hough – Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America
• Andrew McCarthy – Who Needs Friends: An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America
• Lawrence Wells – Backstory: A Literary Life on the Run

Presented by Margaret Walker Center at JSU; Jackson State University Division of Academic Affairs

He tried Kilimanjaro, then hit the open road from Graceland: Clarksdale-born rapper and entrepreneur Rick Ross joins book influencer Cree Myles to talk about Renaissance of a Boss, part memoir of a mid-life crisis, part his own guide to greatness.

• Cree Myles (Moderator)
• Rick Ross – Renaissance of a Boss: Notes from a Creative Reawakening

Live-stream available September 26

Presented by Simmons Farm Raised Catfish; The H.T. White Family Fund

Comfort cooking runs deep in these collections, where identity, memory, and the natural world all find their way to the table.

• Scott Naugle (Moderator)
• Matthew Bounds – Keep It Simple Y'all: Every Day: Foolproof Recipes to Make Your Life Delicious: A Cookbook
• Lokelani Alabanza – Ice Cream Queen: Flavors from Black America's Past, Present, & Future
• Timothy Pakron – Garden Variety: Plant-Focused Recipes Inspired by My Garden

Presented by America250/Mississippi Humanities Council; Capitol Resources, LLC

In celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, County Highway turns its distinctly American eye toward the people, places, objects, ideas, and oddities that make this country what it is in 250 Great American Things. Contributors Lee Clay Johnson and Sasha Wiseman join Matthew Guinn for a lively conversation about the things that define America, from the iconic to the unexpected, and what they reveal about our shared national story.

• Matthew Guinn (Moderator) – The Scribe
• Lee Clay Johnson – 250 Great American Things: A Semiquincentennial Celebration
• Sasha Wiseman – 250 Great American Things: A Semiquincentennial Celebration

Presented by Mississippi State University Libraries; Forman Watkins & Krutz LLP

#1 New York Times bestselling memoirist Belle Burden discusses Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, the book that took the country by storm, with Mississippi author Margaret McMullan.

• Margaret McMullan (Moderator) – Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return
• Belle Burden – Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

Live-stream available September 26

Presented by Brenna Weaver LPC; Rebecca Wiggs

These true stories of belonging, connection, and self-discovery bear witness in the rich, unflinching tradition of Southern storytelling.

• Ebony Lumumba (Moderator)
• Darnell Lamont Walker – Never Can Say Goodbye: The Life of a Death Doula and the Art of a Peaceful End
• Kelly Foster Lundquist – Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage
• Jason G. Green – Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility

Presented by Mississippi Department of Archives & History; H.F. McCarty Jr. Family Foundation
Coverage provided by C-SPAN
Room by BarbourHurst

Artists create and activists transform: explore the lives and moments that helped define the Black experience from the Harlem Renaissance to the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.

• Michael Morris (Moderator)
• Randal Maurice Jelks – My America: Langston Hughes on Democracy
• A'Lelia Bundles – Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance
• Chris Danielson – Brother Outsider, Brother Insider: A Political Biography of Lawrence Guyot Jr.
• Emily Yellin – Nonviolent: A Memoir of Resistance, Agitation, and Love

Presented by Susan Shands Jones; Chip Morgan

Writers celebrate the natural world and the lessons a life spent outdoors hands back.

• Chris Goodwin (Moderator)
• Terry L. Vandeventer – Mississippi Snakes: Their Identification, Natural History, and Influence on the Culture of the Magnolia State
• Donald C. Jackson – Restless Winds: Memoirs of an Outdoorsman
• Evan Peacock – Return to Elkins Creek: A Fishing Odyssey
• Elise L. Smith – Southern Women, Southern Landscapes: Cultural Reflections on the Garden, 1870-1970

Presented by University of Southern Mississippi Center for Writers; Ross & Yerger Insurance, Inc.

Raising children rearranges a life, and these writers get the whole of it onto the page: the mess, the humor, and the love.

• Catherine Simone Gray (Moderator) – Proud Flesh: A Memoir of Motherhood, Intimate Violence, and Reclaiming Pleasure
• Kaycie Hall – Disenchanted: Essays
• Catherine Pierce – Foxes for Everybody: Twenty-Four Hours of Early Motherhood: Essays
• Johanna Gohmann – All Toddlers Are Scorpios: An Astrological Guide to Your Adorable Tiny Terror
• Jennifer Polson Peterson – Degenerate Era of an Expanding Universe: Poems

What does it take to challenge the system while still believing change is possible? In Two Minds, One Rhythm, former Mississippi lawmakers Edward Blackmon, Jr. and Barbara Blackmon reflect on lives shaped by law, politics, family, faith, and the fight for representation. Their story offers a personal look at how the battles of yesterday continue to shape the divisions—and possibilities—of today.

• Rep. Omeria Scott (Moderator)
• Edward Blackmon, Jr. – Two Minds, One Rhythm: Healing America’s Divide through the Redemptive Power of Shared Purpose
• Barbara Blackmon – Two Minds, One Rhythm: Healing America’s Divide through the Redemptive Power of Shared Purpose